writer, editor, modernist, and geek

Mini Movie Review: Hot Girls Wanted

This certainly could have been better, but the Netflix Original documentary is a starter look at the world of amateur porn, for anyone who’s not familiar with how that industry works. It interviews a handful of teen porn “stars”, as well as a broker, a couple of male actors, and one girl’s family. What it does right is show the dirt behind the glam: girls who are young and thin (more important than pretty), who look younger than the 18 years old they’re legally required to be, can have unprotected sex – often degrading, sometimes dangerous – only to be forced out of the industry because they’ve done everything anyone cared to pay for, after only 2 or 3 months. Most of them have to spend so much money on rent and their broker’s percentage and living the “porn lifestyle” to get exposure that by the time they’re washed up, they don’t have anything to show for it except a lifetime of being known as that girl who’s naked online.

Oh, and if you ever watched porn thinking that some random encounter was captured on film, or that a happy, sex-positive couple uploaded their fun for the world to see – well, most times, that’s just what they want you to think.

According to Wikipedia, the film’s focus was changed during shooting, when the filmmakers discovered their original idea wasn’t as interesting; the movie was changed again after it showed at Sundance, to address issues the audience had, and again after viewers took to Twitter to complain. (Also, the broker and two of his performers complained afterward that the film was cut to show “worst case scenarios” instead of the truth.) It has a choppy, slightly lost feeling that could be blamed on all of the changes, or on the directors not having a clear idea of what they wanted to say. Either way, don’t watch it expecting to know everything about the pro-am porn scene. Hot Girls Wanted doesn’t cover the aspects of sex work that can be safe, positive, and fulfilling – and I’ve known enough people in the industry to know that’s possible. This is one perspective, though, so it’s somewhere to begin.

After watching it, the story I was most interested in was the one this movie doesn’t cover: one of the actresses gets into porn as a way to escape her small town and controlling parents, but ends up with a boyfriend who’s ashamed of her work, so she quits to go back to the same town, the same parents, with the added pressure of her boyfriend telling her what to do and who to be. The movie doesn’t explore at all why she felt this was the only way out for her, or what her life is like now, as a small-town waitress that everyone knows “did porn”. Being in porn didn’t make her life any better, but neither did being in this movie.